John Whalen, PhD

John Whalen, PhD

11.8K Subscribers

CEO, AI Research Leader, Cognitive Scientist, O'Reilly Author

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John Whalen, PhD will transform your research with Agentic AI

I’m CEO of Brilliant Experience, have a PhD in cognitive science, and wrote Design for How People Think (O’Reilly).

For 20 years, I’ve helped teams at companies like Google, GSK, and Capital One better understand their customers, capture insights, and build better products.

When AI started reshaping research, I got curious and learned. My team ran “AI vs. Humans” studies to see where AI excels, where human judgment matters most, and how to effectively blend both.

I’ll teach you how to create trustworthy AI research workflows that let you trace every step and insight.

Then advance to the next course and learn to orchestrate agentic research teams, work strategically with synthetic users grounded in real data, and bring in human judgement so you can scale research without losing rigor.

Key Clients
Google
Capital One
Bloomberg
GSK
Pinterest

Alumni reviews

Agentic AI for Research: Build Custom Workflows & Synthetic Users

I took another of John Whalen's courses, so it should tell you something that I came back for a second one.
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Dan

June 2026
UX Researcher · Amazon Lab126

Agentic AI for Research: Build Custom Workflows & Synthetic Users

I was a bit intimidated by this course. I don't have a technical bone in my body. However, John's patient and encouraging manner, humor, and ability to break highly complex concepts into manageable chunks made everything feel doable. It was challenging in the best way, and sometimes even fun! I felt stretched but supported and nothing felt completely out of reach. Highly recommended.
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Anna

June 2026
Director User Research · Independent

Agentic AI for Research: Build Custom Workflows & Synthetic Users

John teaches a complete framework for building research agents that are powerful but also responsible, transparent, and traceable. As a research leader, I feel much more confident now about where we want to use agentic AI in our research workflow (and where we don't). Incredibly valuable!
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Leah

June 2026
Sr. Director, Consumer Insights & User Research · Lovevery

Agentic AI for Research: Build Custom Workflows & Synthetic Users

Very detailed and informative course. Lots of helpful resources to improve how you work with AI tools.

Becky

June 2026
Product Researcher · UserTesting

Agentic AI for Research: Build Custom Workflows & Synthetic Users

This course takes you into the 'aha' moment of what is possible with these new AI tools, but better, is that it teaches you how to control their outputs, how to structure your work, and how to optimize for success.
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Nicolas

June 2026
Head of UX Design · Endress+Hauser